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Friday, October 31, 2008

The beginning is always today.-Mary Wollstonecraft

I finished reading Lost by Gregory Maguire on Tuesday night, it was pretty good.I was surprised though, because many of the reviews I read said it was better than the previous books, but I actually liked all of them better than this one.I think though that it’s because none of the other books were set in modern times, and because they weren’t it made it much easier to believe the fantastical things that happened.Also, I think I enjoyed the others more because they all had their basis in previous stories, i.e. Wicked and Son of a Witch (and consequently the newest book A Lion Among Men, which I haven’t read yet) have a basis in L. (Lyman, hehehe) Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (and subsequent sequels), Mirror Mirror is a retelling of Snow White, and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister is based on Cinderella.

While there are a few references to Scrooge, from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, being based on a member of the main characters family and a couple of references to Jack the Ripper, this one really isn’t based on any other previous literature.I thought it would be, and so I guess that is the real basis for my disappointment.

I also found that there were a lot of loose ends that weren’t tied up, and the novel ended up seeming untidy in consequence.Maybe that’s why it was called Lost…hmmmm.As always though with Gregory Maguire it was well-written, and considering the fact that it took me less than two days to read, I really have no other faults to nitpick.

I’m currently just finishing up Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen by P.G. Wodehouse, and will be done shortly.Of course I’m enjoying it because it’s Jeeves and Wooster!

On a side note I bought (for $1.00) an uncorrected proof copy of Irene Gammel’s Looking for Anne…now I own three copies…dude, I have a serious problem.